Climbing the tallest tree I can find to watch another sunrise has been the one thing that grounds me since this was the only piece of freedom I had. Watching another day start, daring me, mocking me, reminding me that I have no escape from this prison others are so attached to and call life.

My leather-bound diary lies open on my lap. I balance the pen between two fingers, letting it hover while I decide what I’m willing to let go this time. In my other hand, a cigarette rests idle between my knuckles. Nicotine does nothing to me, never has, but I keep it anyway, just to watch the smoke curl and vanish with the thoughts I refuse to write.

Up here, sixty feet above ground - where most would freeze in fear - I can think better.

The sky bleeds from deep purple to burnt orange, painting the clouds in shades I've stopped trying to capture in words a while ago. Some things exist beyond language, beyond the confines of what can be trapped on a page.

---

I can sense him before I even hear his steps on the dead leaves below.

Who chooses the forest to run in when they have the convenient option of concrete? And at this early hour? Will he keep doing this every day for long? *Great*. Here he comes again. The only habit I created to bring me some semblance of peace, and now I can't even enjoy it.

Maybe I could… no. I promised myself I would no longer solve my problems that way. He'll get tired, eventually. They all do.

Roaches.

But this time, he doesn't pass by like he usually does.

The footsteps stop directly beneath my tree, and I go still.

In all these weeks of his morning runs, he's never paused. Never broken stride. The pattern has become almost comforting in its predictability - his presence, then his absence, like a clock I can set this moment by.

"I know you're up there." His voice cuts through the dawn's quiet.

I don't move. How? I know I didn’t leave a trace below, and the canopy conceals me completely from ground level, or so I've thought. How could he know there is someone up here?

"I've known for weeks," he continues, and I can sense his anxiety from here, but then "You're not as invisible as you think." He challenges.

My jaw clenches. *This little shit*.

This is mine. This tree, this sunrise, this moment of peace before the day starts. I close the diary with more force than necessary, the sound echoing down.

"Not much of a talker?" He shifts his weight below. I can picture him standing there, probably with his hands on his hips, head tilted back, trying to spot me through the branches. "That's fine. I just wanted you to know - you're not the only one who finds the world down here suffocating," he speaks softer this time.

Something in his energy makes me pause.

Not the usual bravado men carry like shields. Not the false friendliness that precedes demands or expectations either. Just tired understanding.

That same energy…

Silence stretches between us, but it isn't the uncomfortable kind that people usually try to fill with meaningless noise.

The sun continues its climb, indifferent to our strange standoff. A crow calls somewhere to the east.

"Same time tomorrow?" he asks, and before I can respond - though I wouldn't have - his footsteps resume, crunching away through the undergrowth, fading back into his predictable pattern.

I wait until I can't hear him anymore before opening my diary again. The page stares back at me, that half-finished sentence accusing. I've written:

Maybe solitude is just another word for-

The pen touches paper, hesitates.

Then I close it again, tucking it into the inner pocket of my hoodie where it rests against my ribs like a secret. Some thoughts are better left incomplete.

As I climb down, the sun now fully risen and painting everything in shades of gold I'd never capture in ink, I can't shake the feeling that something has shifted. That my careful isolation has developed a crack, small but spreading, like a fissure in ice before the thaw.

Tomorrow, I decide, I'll find a different tree.

Even as I think it, I know I won't.